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AI adoption for smaller businesses
A practical first step.
A business case before a build.
For owners and leadership teams who want a clear AI opportunity, an honest investment model, and a plan their people can use. AI consulting engagements start at $30,000.
Discuss your AI opportunity ↗Start with a workflow
that matters.
Customer service, proposal preparation, knowledge access, sales research, and administrative work can all present opportunities. The right starting point depends on your baseline, data, costs, and the people responsible for the process.
We help you decide what deserves investment, what needs preparation, and what should wait. A defined advisory engagement gives you a decision and a practical roadmap before committing to custom development or a larger rollout.
What the entry engagement covers.
1. Understand the business
Meet the sponsor and workflow owners, map the current process, and establish available baseline evidence. Review information access, systems, constraints, and readiness.
2. Evaluate the opportunity
Create a prioritized shortlist. Develop a detailed business case for the selected opportunity with cost projections, benefit assumptions, risks, and conservative, base, and upside scenarios.
3. Plan the first initiative
Recommend a practical approach, identify appropriate tools or providers where needed, and define a phased roadmap with accountable owners, adoption activities, and success measures.
Leave with something you can act on.
- A readiness assessment and prioritized opportunity shortlist.
- A business case and ROI model with an explicit time horizon and assumptions register.
- Cost projections covering advisory, implementation, software, usage, internal effort, and ongoing support.
- A tool or vendor shortlist where appropriate, with evaluation criteria.
- An adoption roadmap, responsibilities, and measures of success.
- An executive decision workshop and recommendation on the next step.
The proposal defines the number of workflows and stakeholders, deliverables, information required, schedule, and scope boundaries. Custom development, integrations, software, infrastructure, specialist reviews, and ongoing support are separately scoped and budgeted. The starting fee does not include an unlimited implementation.
Ambitious economics.
Evidence before commitment.
Where supported by the evidence, we seek opportunities with the potential for a 10x benefit-to-cost multiple over an agreed period. This is an aspirational target, not a promise or guarantee. We separate realized savings from time that may be redeployed, and incremental contribution margin from gross revenue.
Every model identifies assumptions, adoption and ramp-up, recurring costs, uncertainty, and sensitivity. A recommendation to defer or narrow the initiative can be as valuable as a recommendation to proceed.
Explore our financial modeling approach →Senior involvement.
Specialist delivery where needed.
Jason Marks leads strategy, engagement design, and coordination between your business, IT team, and external providers. Vetted developers and implementation partners perform technical delivery where appropriate. Legal, security, and compliance work is coordinated with qualified professionals.
If you proceed beyond the assessment, LEAD Above can support RFI/RFP creation, vendor evaluation, implementation program management, change management, and adoption through a separately agreed scope.
A good fit when…
- An owner or executive sponsor can make decisions and involve the people doing the work.
- You can provide baseline information or are willing to establish it.
- You want to assess a meaningful operating challenge and invest in a sound decision.
You do not need to arrive with a chosen AI tool or a fully defined technical solution.